EGYPTIAN BEER EXPERIMENT
Steve Gustafson
.Fac Quodlibet Vis/
This is a description of a very experimental beer that I brewed about
six months ago, in an a-historical attempt to recreate a beer using
ingredients that were (except for one very obvious exception) available
to the ancient Egyptians. The only archaeological authority I consulted
was the Roman author Diodorus Siculus, who described Egyptian beer.
1 lb barley flour
1 lb millet flour
2 cups corn sugar
Water to make dough
Baker's yeast.
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Step the first:
Mix a cup of corn sugar each with the barley flour and millet flour.
Mix in water enough to make a fairly thin, pourable dough with each, and
add the baker's yeast and knead or stir as best you can. This will not
rise far. After about 6-8 hours, pour the risen dough for each onto
greased cookie sheets and bake it until brown.
Then, take the barley and millet "bread", and cut it into
white-bread-slice sized squares, and toast each of them in a toaster.
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Step the second:
2 gallons of water
One small bottle of "Beano", an anti-flatulence enzyme available from
most vegetarian grocery stores. For better or worse, Beano was
unavailable to the ancient Egyptians, who according to other ancient
authors suffered frequently from intestinal gas.
Boil 2 gallons of water from the Nile. When boiling, crumble all of the
squares of barley and millet bread toast into each of them.
Let the bread and water mixture set until it becomes just above room
temperature. Add the entire bottle of Beano to the mixture and allow it
to set overnight.
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Step the third:
3 1/2 gallons of water
One 6" liquorice root
1/2 oz. anise seed
1/2 oz. herb rue (very optional - if bitterness desired)
4 pounds light barley malt extract
3 pounds honey
Four cups sorghum molasses syrup
Wine Yeast (I used Montrachet; Champagne might have been better.)
Strain the bits of bread out of the bread, water and Beano mixture you
made yesterday and bring the whole mess to a boil again. Give the bits
of bread to the birds.
Grate the liquorice root and reduce it into little pencil shaving sized
bits.
Put everything except the yeast and extra water into the water/bread
mixture. I let it boil for 45 minutes.
Pour the wort into the 3 1/2 gallons water. If you are using Nile water
boil all of the water first.
Pitch, ferment, prime, and bottle as you would a regular ale. This will
have a long fermentation.
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NOTES:
The beer was cloudy. I suspect this was a natural consequence of
brewing with bread and Beano. Grain brewers may have more success if
they tried to mash the bread, or mash whole grains. Whole millet may be
available from feed stores as a bird seed. Just what you want to tell
your friends about what you put in this beer.
Diodorus Siculus's "Historical Library," book IV, chap. 2, and book V,
chap. 26, contains a description of the product of Egyptian breweries.
He relates that it was "nearly equal to wine in strength and flavour."
The product of this recipe may not reach quite that stature, but it
comes close.
Hops, of course, were unknown to the peoples around the Mediterranean in
antiquity. Rue was a bitter herb that was available to them. I have
heard from another experimenter that tarragon also makes an interesting
addition to ancient beer styles.
Some models of daily life included in Egyptian tombs provide images of
brewers, usually combined with bakers. Apparently in Egypt, as in much
of the ancient world, brewing and baking were considered two aspects of
the same trade.
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Since this got started by a discussion of recipes using sorghum
molasses, this recipe may be more successful. It's another one of my
own creations, albeit it's based on a very standard recipe.
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MOTHER DAMNABLE'S EXTRA PECULIER
INDIANA PALE ALE
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3.3 pound can John Bull amber malt extract
1 pound dry light malt extract
2 1/2 cups sorghum molasses
3/4 oz. Northern Brewer hop pellets (boiling)
1/2 oz. Fuggle hop pellets (finishing)
1/3 oz. package Burton water salts with papain
Red Star ale yeast
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S.O.P. --- boil 2 gallons of water, put in all the ingredients except
the yeast and finishing hops; boil for 45 minutes. Put in Fuggle hops
in final 5 minutes of boil. Pour immediately into 3 1/2 gallons of
water & cool to room temperature and add yeast. S. G. approx 1.052;
final gravity approx. 1.007
Prime with 1 cup sorghum molasses in 1 pint water.
This batch has been aging in the bottles for about a month now, and I've
just started breaking into it. It is rather different, but not bad, at
this point. The sorghum seems to lend it a rather tart flavour that is
not at all like the British "Old Peculier" ales brewed with blackstrap
molasses.
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And, for those who are interested, here is the recipe for my first
experimental batch of an attempt to approximate the flavour of
Ballantine Ale. What I did was take the ingredients for the smoothest
lager-style brew I liked the best of all my rather infrequent essays
into that style, upped the bitterness with some extra boiling hops, and
am going to brew this as an ale. I just set it aside to cool before
typing this.
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BALLANTINE ALE EXPERIMENTAL NO. 1
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One 3.3 pound can Premier hopped light malt extract syrup
2 pounds dry light malt extract powder
2 pounds bulk clover honey
1/3 ounce Northern Brewer hop pellets (boiling)
1/2 ounce Cascade hop pellets (finishing)
Yeast that came with the Premier cans.
S.O.P. for ales once again; I boilt the ingredients except for the
finishing hops and yeast in 2 gallons of water, then added the mixture
to 3 1/2 gallons water drawn off earlier. I boiled this very delicately
--- with very few large bubbles until the very finish --- for an hour.
1/2 ounce Cascade pellets at the last 5 minutes of the boil.
I used no water salts for this one, only the very hard New Albany, IN
tap water. New Albany tap water already contains some rather unusual
trace elements, including manganese up to some 150 parts per million.
I've been suspicious of it since I've never seen a discussion of the
effects of manganese in brewing, but I thought I'd give it a try. If it
proves to be an invaluable invention I'd be glad to start selling
bottles of New Albany tap water to homebrewers. ;-)
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http://www.cs.csustan.edu/~gcrawfor/beerfiles/egypt.html